FanPost

Tim Dierkes Position Player Trade Candidates Leaderboard + Pirates Prospects Trade Value

With trade deadline season rapidly approaching and the Bucs boasting the lowest run differential of the teams with the 8 best win-loss records in MLB, we Pirates fans are already swimming in a sea of acquisitive speculation. Stanton's worth or not worth X because Y, Rios would require Q or maybe even Z (I'm as guilty as anyone, obvs), Locke would fetch so and so, and then there's the "stand pat for chemistry's sake" contingent, too.

Well, Tim Dierkes just might be a little bit interested in MLB Trade Rumors and he's whipped up a helpful dataset to keep in mind heading towards the ASB...

I thought it'd be interesting to apply Dierkes' leaderboard with Kevin Creagh's excellent work on Trade Surplus Values from last season. I'd guess those values have changed -- maybe even substantially post-Dodger-TV-contract -- but it gives us another good dataset to work with when speculating on possible acquisitions. I'll paste the conclusions below but please take a look at the link above for a full explanation (I'm not sure I understand it, either).

Hitters #1-10: 42 unique data points, average WAR per player was 17.76 for their 6 years of team control (high – Andruw Jones 38.8, low – Ruben Mateo -1.3), Present Worth WAR 14.56, Surplus Value $42.2M

Hitters #11-25: 30 unique data points, average WAR per player was 14.16 (high – Todd Helton 35.7, low – Jose Guillen -1.2), Present Worth WAR 11.61, Surplus Value $33.36M

Hitters #26-50: 74 unique data points, average WAR per player was 7.98 (high – Albert Pujols 48.9, perhaps ranked a touch too low by BA, low – Dee Brown -4.3), Present Worth WAR 6.54, Surplus Value $18.12M

Hitters #51-75: 81 unique data points, average WAR per player was 4.75 (high – David Wright 37.5, low – Peter Bergeron -3.4), Present Worth WAR 3.9, Surplus Value $10.2M

Hitters #76-100: 80 unique data points, average WAR per player was 4.84 (high – Chase Utley 41.3, low – Karim Garcia -3.5), Present Worth WAR 3.97, Surplus Value $10.43M

Pitchers #1-10: 17 unique data points, average WAR per player was 11.45 (high – Ben Sheets 24.5, low – Jesse Foppert 0.1), Present Worth WAR 9.39, Surplus Value $26.7M

Pitchers #11-25: 41 unique data points, average WAR per player was 8.28 (high – Roy Oswalt 31.9, low – Scott Ruffcorn -0.9), Present Worth WAR 6.79, Surplus Value $18.89M

Pitchers #26-50: 61 unique data points, average WAR per player was 6.58 (high – Cliff Lee 30.1, low – Franklyn German -1.2), Present Worth WAR 5.4, Surplus Value $14.7M

Pitchers #51-75: 83 unique data points, average WAR per player was 3.66 (high – Zack Greinke 26.8, low – Andy Larkin -0.9), Present Worth WAR 3, Surplus Value $7.5M

Pitchers #76-100: 90 unique data points, average WAR per player was 3.83 (high – Carlos Zambrano 21.6, low – John Frascatore -0.8), Present Worth WAR 3.14, Surplus Value $7.93M

Perhaps we could use this as a thread to discuss possible deadline deal speculation.

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